Nine hits programming low note

December 4 2002By Alan Attwood

Whenever things don't work out quite right it helps to think of others who are having worse weeks. So until Monday night the people I was feeling sorry for was anyone who supports the Carlton Football Club, the Victorian Liberal Party and the English cricket team. If John Elliott is a Nasser Hussain fan, for example, he could really use a soothing cup of tea.

But now there's another group who are feeling let down. So comfy chairs all round, please, for anyone who voted Liberal, barracks for England, knows all the words to We Are The Navy Blues AND has been assiduously following the fortunes of Tony Soprano and his TV family.

For after a lousy weekend these people would have sat down at 9.30pm Monday for a treat: the first episode in a new series of The Sopranos, the Emmy-award-winning show about a mob boss and his relatives, both personal and professional. The Nine network had drummed up plenty of publicity for this media event, with the show's star, James Gandolfini, featuring on the cover of at least one TV magazine. Newspaper columns on Monday previewed the new episode.

But it wasn't seen. Instead of a new show, Nine screened a repeat (or an "encore presentation", as they announced it) from the last series. Sopranos fans found themselves trudging over very old turf. They now feel cheated and conned, and the people at Nine - who were fielding quite a few angry calls yesterday - should feel glad that no viewers share Tony Soprano's interest in the waste management business.

OK, this is just a TV show. There are more important things. But principles are involved. And the fact is that Nine jilted its audience. It promised one thing and delivered another. Imagine going to the ballet to see Swan Lake and being served up a Nutcracker. Or voting for Steve Bracks and getting Steve Irwin, the crocodile man. That's what Nine has done.");document.write("

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According to a network spokeswoman, the buck stops with the programming department. It seems that after Nine started promoting a new Sopranos there was a groundswell of muttering from fans suggesting that the network had mucked up the previous (third) series - showing it irregularly and late, often after people had stopped trying to be millionaires. So a decision was made to hang on to new episodes and revisit some old ones.

This decision, which the spokeswoman described as "very unusual", was made late on Friday. Too late, apparently, to stop TV magazines and columnists discussing a show that was not screened as advertised. Even yesterday, Nine's own website had "Tony invests in a potentially lucrative land deal, while his wife, Carmela, frets about the family's long-term financial security". Perhaps they do, but not on Monday night.

If they weren't aware of it before, Nine now knows that Sopranos watchers are very vocal. They may not accept assurances that new episodes WILL be screened next year. My great hope is that Kerry Packer sat himself down the other evening to catch his favourite gangster show on his own network. If he did, I hope he had a phone close to hand. One of the bugs in the Sopranos' home wouldn't have been needed to pick up the ensuing conversation.

On the subject of polite chats, I asked the Nine spokeswoman what she might say next time she saw her good friends from programming. Good call, perhaps? "Their call," she replied.